Worst-case scenario: “Revolution” is a hit TV series set in a post-apocalyptic future. Power grid sabotaged, down. No power, no lights, no autos. We adapt? Badly. Horses. Wagons. Scavenging food. Marauding terrorists. Machetes. Another metaphor for what’s ahead.

Yes, sounds familiar. Plan for “a breakdown of the civilized infrastructure,” warned former Morgan Stanley guru Barton Biggs in his classic “Wealth, War and Wisdom.” Forget gated communities: “Your safe haven must be self-sufficient and capable of growing some kind of food … It should be well-stocked with seed, fertilizer, canned food, wine, medicine, clothes, etc. Think Swiss Family Robinson.” You need an arsenal of guns and ammo: “A few rounds over the approaching brigands heads would probably be a compelling persuader that there are easier farms to pillage.”

Barton was no fanatical left-wing liberal. The opposite. Joined Morgan Stanley about the same time I did. Stayed a few decades longer. As chief global strategist, Institutional Investor put Biggs on their “All-America Research Team” 10 times. Smart Money said he moved “markets from Argentina to Hong Kong.”

Later he ran a successful hedge fund. Superrich clientele. And yes, he saw darkness coming, advising clients about surviving, after the revolution. He even saw their Swiss Family’s shipwreck tragedy as an opportunity to teach his children family values, self-reliance, subsistence living, caring of the natural world that feeds us, focusing on what really matters. How about you? After the revolution, will you be ready?

Biggs often comes to mind when I reflect on the mind-set of America’s 95 million investors. More and more I see why there are so many differences, so much political rancor between the GOP, Dems and tea partiers, why so much mean-spirted rage keeps boiling up from deep in America’s collective conscience.

We live in a noisy, new world filled with rage. The Internet is now a stylized version of the ancient Roman Coliseum. With gladiators, deadly animals, incompetent leaders, columnists. Imagine reporting from an anchor from the classic film, “Network”: screaming right along with an angry crowd: “I’m made as hell and I won’t take it anymore.” Yes, we lash out at the insane world we live in.

And it’s getting worse. Columnists see it in readers’ comments. Mention a few hot-button issues in a column — anticapitalism, the pope, women’s rights — like we did recently and rhetoric goes ballistic. Welling up, a deep, unconscious volcanic blow-off of the painful historic paradigm shift passing through all people and nations on our fragile planet.

No vision, no compromise, ideology rules ... America drifting

What’s going on? Our best and brightest are neutralizing America’s future with their opposing ideologies. Example: two Noble economists, Michael Spence and Joseph Stiglitz. They shared the 2001 prize. Are a perfect metaphor for all other political, commercial, religious and economic conflict tearing America apart:

The Optimist: In “The Next Convergence: The Future of Economic Growth in a Multispeed World,” Michael Spence sees a bright global economy growing: In 1950 just 15% of the world’s 2.5 billion were living in developed nations. But by 2050 as much as 75% of an estimated 10 billion will live in developed nations.

The Realist: Stiglitz looks at the same world, same stats but is anything but optimistic. In his book, “The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future,”Stiglitz says America “likes to think of itself as a land of opportunity.” But today the “American dream is a myth … the gap’s widening ... the clear trend is one of concentration of income and wealth at the top, the hollowing out of the middle, and increasing poverty at the bottom.”

Moreover, what Spence leaves to us to resolve is the fact that in the years from 1950 to 2050, a population increase in developed nations means 7 billion using 33 times more scarce, limited, and nonrenewable resources while also dumping 33 times more waste than people living in undeveloped and emerging nations.

And while the optimists are convinced Silicon Valley techno-geniuses will solve our big problems, at the end of a Hoover Institute interview Spence added that his global economic predictions may fall short — if instead we “destroy the planet on the way through” and fail to “find ways to be less energy-intensive and use resources in a gentler way.” That’s a huge “if.”

When the Economist reviewed Spence’s “Next Convergence” they warned that “when the poor catch up” all nations will be forced to confront “the new challenges of growing richer.” A new world of prosperity was a bigger problem than austerity,

Intraday Data provided by SIX Financial Information and subject to terms of use.
Historical and current end-of-day data provided by SIX Financial Information. Intraday data
delayed per exchange requirements. S&P/Dow Jones Indices (SM) from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
All quotes are in local exchange time. Real time last sale data provided by NASDAQ. More
information on NASDAQ traded symbols and their current financial status. Intraday
data delayed 15 minutes for Nasdaq, and 20 minutes for other exchanges. S&P/Dow Jones Indices (SM)
from Dow Jones & Company, Inc. SEHK intraday data is provided by SIX Financial Information and is
at least 60-minutes delayed. All quotes are in local exchange time.